I listen to the silence. The silence listens to me. No matter how many times you would tell me I have installed a central heating system, I still like to bathe in a basin. I tend to ration everything, because this kind of consumption does not do us any honour. When the lights go out, I'm the only one from our floor who shouts. Hooray. He won. The dictator. I only go to the grocery store when there's queuing. Instead, I eat God knows what and almost nothing. I have all my money deposited at CEC Bank. Anyway, whatever they say, it was better before. Some people tell me I'm some kind of chauvinist. It's class warfare. Dude.
(Translated by Raluca Simion / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year II / Corrected by prof. dr. Nadina Vișan / Edited by Silvia Petrescu, coordinator of the translations)Real Fiction is a collective project started in 2013 by Florin Piersic Jr. The concept of Real Fiction continued to exist as a Facebook group, after a volume of stories was published at Humanitas Publishing House. (In October 2022, the group has 9,400 members.) The authors write ultra-short stories, with the texts limited to 500 characters (in Romanian, so the length of the English translation might be a little different) - a flash-fiction exercise on a topic that changes every few days. The group's coordinators are Florin Piersic Jr., Gabriel Molnar, Răzvan Penescu, and Luchian Abel. (Drawing by Adrian T. Roman)
Versiunea în română a acestui text se poate citi aici, în rubrica Ficțiuni Reale. 
